Journalist and human rights activist Dina Meza threatened again

Source: Reporters Without Borders

Journalist and human rights activist Dina Meza threatened again
Published on Friday 27 April 2012.

Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the threats received by journalist and human rights activist Dina Meza, the latest in a long list of acts of intimidation against journalists in recent months. The targets have included two other women journalists after they organized a protest in defence of free expression outside the presidential palace last December that was dispersed violently.

“We firmly condemn the repeated threats to Meza and other journalists and human rights defenders in Honduras and we urge the authorities to take whatever measures are necessary to deal with this situation, which limits freedom of expression and obstructs human rights work,” Reporters Without Borders said.

Meza is a member of the Committee of Families of Detainees and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) and works with the Defensores en Línea website. As a journalist, she often covers land conflicts in the Bajo Aguán region. She has reported being the target of repeated threats and acts of intimidation since February.

On 22 February, she received two SMS messages signed “Commando Alvarez Martinez” (CAM), a pseudonym often used for sending threats to human rights activists and journalists after the 2009 coup d’état. One said: “We are going to burn your ‘pipa’ (vagina) with caustic lime until you scream and then the whole squad will have fun. CAM.” And the other said: “You’ll end up dead like the Aguán people, there’s nothing better than screwing whores.”

1. k&R

2. Look to the U.S. Republican congressional butt-in-skis as the ones who deserve congratulations

for the hellish state of affairs in Honduras, which immediately after the right-wing coup became the most violent country in the world for dissidents who didn't bow down to the right-wing political machine.

First off the plane were these fine humanitarians, beating a path to throw their flabby arms around the new coup President at the time, James Micheletti:

Honduras's interim President Roberto Micheletti, second from right, poses for pictures with Republican Doug Lamborn of Colorado, left, Republican Peter Roskam of Illinois, second from left, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, third front left and Republican Aaron Schock of Illinois, after a meeting at the presidential house in Tegucigalpa, Friday, Oct. 2, 2009.The U.S. senator and the three congressmen met with Micheletti in defiance of official Washington policy barring contact with the architects of the military coup that ousted the nation's president Manuel Zelaya.

Not to mention, Miami's own Cuban "exile" Congresswoman, Ileana, Ros-Lehtinen.